2001 Darwin awards

It's that time again... They are finally out again. You all know about the Darwin Awards - It's an annual honour given to the person who did the
gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow
who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

And the nominees for 2001 are:

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not
surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down,
killing both him and his sister.

A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died of suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 6'2" tall and weighed
225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to create a
schoolgirl's uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its place. The
other end of the hose was connected to one end of a hollow wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter which was inserted into his rectum for
reasons unknown, and was the cause of his suffocation.

Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his death to his family very awkward.

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants
of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their
ankles.

A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call. She had no details before arriving, except that someone had reported that his father was not
breathing. Upon arrival, the officer found the man face down on the couch naked. When she rolled him over to check for a
pulse and to start CPR, she noticed burn marks around his genitals. After the ambulance arrived and removed the man, who was declared dead on arrival
at the hospital, the police made a closer inspection of the couch, and noticed that the man had made a hole between the cushions. Upon flipping the
couch
over, they discovered what had caused his death. Apparently, the man had a habit of putting his penis between the cushions, down into the hole and
between two electrical sanders (with the sandpaper removed, for obvious reasons).

According to the story, after his orgasm the discharge shorted out one of the sanders, electrocuting him.

A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and killing
herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have been remarkable except it appears the driver's attention had been distracted by her
Tamagotchi key ring, which had started urgently beeping for food as she drove along. In an attempt to press the correct buttons to save the
Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost her own.

A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle. Fairfax County police
said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at
Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was
found nearby. "The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground," Carmichael said.
Police say the apparent cause of death was "Major trauma."

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using a rattlesnake as a ball. The friend -
no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalized.

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all
potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon
entering the
building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight
of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter like
object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was
virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as "bright" by his peers.

And the winner:

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smouldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The
wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what
it was and what had happened.

It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military
transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long and
straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from
the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have
reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph (563 km/h) and continuing at full power for an
additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks
under full afterburners, causing him to become insensible for the remainder of the event.

However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the
brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the
cliff face at a height of 125 feet (38 m) leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable;
however, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of
debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron nearly reached Mach I, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph (676 km/h)!

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smouldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The
wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what
it was and what had happened.

It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military
transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long and
straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from
the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have
reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph (563 km/h) and continuing at full power for an
additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks
under full afterburners, causing him to become insensible for the remainder of the event.

However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the
brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the
cliff face at a height of 125 feet (38 m) leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable;
however, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of
debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron nearly reached Mach I, attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph (676 km/h)!

Oh man I hate to burst this bubble because its so funny but this myth has been around forever and actually has been disproved for the most part. The
Discovery Channel ran a show dealing with these myths like this one and the pop-rocks and soda incident which killed the boy who played Mikey from the
life cereal commercial. Actually, two dudes did find an old Impala but were unable to procure any JATO(Jet Assisted Take Off) units so went with
professional comtemporary rockets fired in sequence which when calculated out produced more thrust for a longer time than one JATO unit. The car,
which was driven by remote servo motors from a helicopter following it, did reach in excess of 200 MPH on the open dessert when the rockets were fired
but did not launch from the surface and came to a gentle stop after spending its fuel.

Maybe this did happen but it was sometime in the 60s when its supposed to have taken place. No State highway patrol record exist to back up the
story. They interviewed several officers about it during the research leading to the experiment.

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